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Egyptian ophidian / WED 8-31-22 / Dubious food-eating guideline / Type of meal first sold by C.A. Swanson & Sons / Nickname for Mowgli in the Jungle Book / Flux 1990s MTV series

Constructor: Joe Deeney

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (though it will probably time out "Easy" because of the undersized grid (14x15))

THEME: FIVE-SECOND RULE (35A: Dubious food-eating guideline ... or a hint to the answers to this puzzle's starred clues) — the "second" letter in all the answers to the starred clues is "V," i.e. Roman numeral "five"; in each instance the letter appears as an initial, pronounced "VEE":

Theme answers:

• TV DINNER (16A: *Type of meal first sold by C.A. Swanson & Sons)
• IV FLUID (24A: *Hospital bagful)
• AV CLUB (26A: *Multimedia-focused school org.)
• RV PARK (44A: *Camper's place, maybe)
• JV SQUAD (45A: *Up-and-coming group in high school athletics)
• EV CREDIT (57A: *Federal tax incentive for buying a Tesla, say)

Word of the Day: IDI Amin (31A: Dictator Amin) —

Idi Amin Dada Oumee (/ˈiːdi ɑːˈmiːn, ˈɪdi -/, UK also /- æˈmiːn/; c. 1925 – 16 August 2003) was a Ugandan military officer and politician who served as the third president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. He ruled as a military dictator and is considered one of the most brutal despots in modern world history. [...] Amin's rule was characterised by rampant human rights abuses, including political repression, ethnic persecution and extrajudicial killings, as well as nepotism, corruption, and gross economic mismanagement. International observers and human rights groups estimate that between 100,000 and 500,000 people were killed under his regime. (wikipedia) (my emph.)

• • •

You don't see 14-wide grids very much. Seems to me grids are more apt to bulk up than slim down if they're going to go off the standard 15x15 model. There's a good reason for slimming this one down, as the revealer is only 14 letters long, and 14s are really awkward to handle in 15x15 grids; plus you'd need another 14 to balance the revealer out symmetrically if you put it in a 15x15, whereas with a 14-wide grid you can just sit the revealer dead center. Much more elegant that way. As for the theme itself, I breezed through the NW and though I wasn't really paying attention to "starred clues," I figured something was up thematically with the "V"s after getting TV DINNER and AV CLUB. Then I hit the revealer, and got a double dose of delight, in that I loved the phrase itself ... and then several seconds later the thematic import of the phrase hit me, and I liked that too. "Five" in the "second" position of every themer. And it's not just that the second letter is "V," it's that it's pronounced as "VEE" in every case. It would be way, way too thin if the themers merely had "V" as the second letter. Having it as an initial, a stand-alone letter, really tightens the theme considerably ... which brings me to the one thing about the theme that I found truly jarring and inexplicable, namely the stray "V" in DMVS (37D: Real ID issuers, in brief). Why would you let *any* non-thematic stand-alone "V"s into this puzzle?! Your whole premise is FIVE-SECOND, i.e. "V" comes second, but now you've introduced an auxiliary FIVE-THIRD rule!? I'm sure it was tough to handle all those damn "V"s in the grid, but for the sake of sparkle and polish and elegance, not to mention consistency, you can't let a "V" get away from you like that. Nails + chalkboard.

["The stars are gonna spell out the answers to tomorrow's crossword..."]

Outside the theme, there's a little less to love. I like the long Downs OK, though the clue on "I CAN DREAM" feels tenuous (31D: "My lotto ticket might be the winner"). The clue phrase sounds like something a not terribly bright person would say; there's no inflection, no sense that the speaker has any sense of the preposterousness of the odds, which is why it's not a great clue for "I CAN DREAM," which situates lotto triumph securely in Fantasyland, where it belongs. There's also no reason a "busy day" should be a BLUR. I tend to remember busy days better than unbusy ones. The puzzle has always expected me to know a weird lot about "The Jungle Book," and MAN CUB went way beyond my normal store of crossword knowledge (KAA, BALOO, SHERE, etc.), but it was ultimately inferable from crosses (5D: Nickname for Mowgli in "The Jungle Book"). I didn't love the clue on MINUS (41A: -) because I kept wondering why they'd omitted the clue, or what clue this was the second part of ... took a few crosses to see that the dash was a MINUS symbol. I had CEDE before CAVE (28D: Give in) and while I got SCARFS on the first guess, I held that "C" very loosely, knowing that it could very easily be an "N" (8D: Devours, with "down") Thought the pun on ELISE ("a lease") was awful, but I can't yet decide if it's so awful it's good (59A: Good name for a home renter?). My current feeling is no, it's bad. But things change.

The worst thing about the puzzle for me was seeing IDI Amin's stupid face in it again. There are two good reasons to banish the dude forever. First, he was an ethnic-cleansing war criminal of the first order (see "Word of the Day," above). It has never been entirely clear to me why the world's most famous murderous dictator (white) is never* allowed to appear in the grid but IDI AMIN (Black) was a grid staple. Note: not interested in Comparative Atrocity Studies, only noting that war criminals are demonstrably more likely to appear in the grid if they aren't white. Maybe "foreign" names are just more tempting to constructors because of their "unusual" letter combinations. I dunno. The other good reason for IDI banishment is sheer name fatigue. That guy used to be ubiquitous, since both his name parts are incredibly useful, grid-wise. To the puzzle's (and constructors') immense credit, his visibility has radically decreased in recent years. AMIN hasn't appeared in the #NYTXW in almost three years, and today's is the first appearance of IDI in 2022. Here's the last ten years' worth of IDIs; you can see how the flow slows to a trickle in recent years:

source: xwordinfo

It would be great if the guy disappeared from grids entirely. I'm never gonna not notice, not comment on, not disparage the appearance of a murderer of this magnitude. Yes, it's just three letters, but it's an unnecessary distraction and a significant (albeit brief) downer. Puzzle vibes are real! Make them good!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*Did you know?: HITLER used to appear in the grid reasonably regularly, mostly during and immediately after WWII itself. Look at these insane clues!

P.S. in case you somehow have never heard of the FIVE-SECOND RULE, it's the idea that if food falls on the floor and you pick it up before five seconds have elapsed, it's still good to eat. It's a pretty good rule: food I drop on the floor, I still eat. Food I *find* on the floor ... not so much.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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